Risk perception

Overview

Risk is not a physical thing: is it really possibly to perceive it? Engineering approaches to estimating risk are based on historical observation of frequencies and consequences. Subjective risk, as analyzed by social scientists, concerns people’s thoughts, beliefs and constructs. The level of perceived risk is a subjective judgment about the state of the world, and is affected by several factors including

• catastrophic potential
• equity (do those receiving benefits bear their share of risks?)
• effects on future generations
• controllability and involuntariness

This slideset presents three approaches to understanding risk perception:

1. the psychometric paradigm, which argues that risk can be understood as a function of general properties of the risk object

2. cultural theory, under which risk is seen as the joint product of knowledge of the future and consent about the most desired prospects

3. the social amplification of risk framework, which analyzes how concerns about hazards are amplified or attenuated by social, institutional, and cultural processes

This submodule is a part of the risk management module.

Course material

Risk perception Lecture slides (PDF)

Other resources

We recommend the following sources of further information on this topic:

• the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Perception Survey

• Taking account of societal concerns about risk: Framing the problem, UK Health and Safety Executive (2002)

• Review of the Public Perception of Risk, and Stakeholder Engagement, UK Health and Safety Executive (2005)

• The Cultural Cognition project at Yale Law School analyzes how cultural values shape public risk perceptions and related policy beliefs

• P. Sandman’s web site on risk communication